MEERHOLZ (Germany): The quiet German village of Meerholz doesn’t get a lot of attention as a rule, but a mass of muddy footprints in Eckhard Paul’s wheat field bears witness to an unusual flurry of visitors this week.

Paul discovered on Wednesday that he was the owner of a piece of land that now stands at the geographical centre of the European Union, after Bulgaria and Romania joined on Jan 1.

“It was very surprising,” Paul says of the phone call he received from the city hall summoning him to an impromptu party that afternoon. “It took them a while to track me down. No one really pays attention to who owns all this land out here.” But the 47-year-old, who rents out the field while he works as a lorry driver, doesn’t expect the discovery to change his life. “I could set up a food-and-drinks stand, but the tourists will probably be gone after a couple of weeks,” he says.

“It’s too remote out here.”

On a clear day, you can glimpse Frankfurt from the hills above Meerholz -- the financial centre to which many of the village’s 3,755 inhabitants make the hour-long drive each day.

And the mayor of the city of Gelnhausen, to which Meerholz belongs, hopes more and more people may soon be making the journey in the opposite direction.

Juergen Michaelis has already, quite literally, put Meerholz on the map, with new tourist plans at the town hall’s front desk proudly marking the spot that is the EU’s new mid-point -- an honour previously held by Kleinmaischeid in Rhineland-Pfalz.

“Obviously, it’s a marketing opportunity,” he says, “though I’m a bit sceptical about Bulgaria and Romania joining.” The prosperous city of 22,000, nicknamed “Barbarossastadt” after Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who founded it in 1170, already attracts more than 100,000 tourists a year to its mediaeval city centre, cathedral and castle.

And Michaelis says Gelnhausen, with its location at the crossing of major trade routes including the road between Frankfurt and Leipzig, is used to being at the centre of things, as it was once the central point of Barbarossa’s empire.

“Barbarossa’s son, Emperor Heinrich the second, said this was his favourite place in the empire. We say people should come here to see if it’s true,” he says.

City officials hope the novelty appeal of Gelnhausen’s new status will also tempt more corporate clients, such as the big banks based in Frankfurt, to hold hospitality events there.

Gelnhausen may be at the geographical centre of the EU, but its financial position is well above average, the city’s own statistics show.

Consumer purchasing power, at $26,570 per citizen, is 16 per cent higher than in the rest of Germany, and 33 per cent above the average of the EU’s now 27 members, according to European Commission figures published last month.

About 45 per cent of the working population are employed in industry, mostly in small and mid-sized firms, compared with the EU 27 average of 26 per cent, while 30 per cent work in service industries, less than half the EU average of 72 per cent.

Unemployment, at about 7 per cent, is also less than the EU average of 7.9 per cent.

As to the question of whether life will get even better in Gelnhausen after this week’s news, its citizens are sceptical.

“Theoretically, it sounds good, but in practice it doesn’t mean much,” says 28-year-old waitress Cora Scholz.

The centre of the EU will remain where it is if Croatia joins, but would move to the south east if Turkey, for example, were to become a member.

Eckhard Paul, still staring in puzzlement at the plot of land that has caused so much fuss, is sanguine about the possibility of losing the status that came so unexpectedly. “I have nothing against Turkey joining,” he says.—Reuters